Episodes from a medical student's perspective

Tag Archives: being a patient

So yesterday I posted six words that I believe describe the point that I am in life. The first of those is surrendered. I have surrendered (or yielded but not given up) first of all to God. God has been working in miraculous ways and I must continue day by day to be led gently by Him. He also is continuing to show me how to surrender each day to Him and give up my burdens so that He can carry them. Here’s an example of how He has been working in my life. My mother is a diabetic who has to take long acting insulin (glargine AKA brand name Lantus). She has been taking care of me and is in a different part of the state away from her primary care physician’s (PCP) office. Well almost two weeks ago her bottle of insulin broke. We prayed. And silence (or at least it felt like that). The physician faxed over a prescription to a nearby pharmacy but her insurance denied to cover the insulin. We currently lack the funds to pay out-of-pocket so my poor mother was with out her insulin. WE were back and forth with the insurance.

Just a couple of nights ago, my mother and I again prayed for this issue to be resolved. We surrendered the problem to God. The next morning I received a phone call from her physician’s office asking if the issue of obtaining more insulin had been resolved. Of course it hadn’t and the medical assistant (MA) informed me of some online resources as well as numbers to call the insurance. I prayed after I got off the phone with the MA and went to search online for some discounts on insulin. Well one click led to another and next thing I know I’m on the phone with a real human after pressing tons of options to an 800 number. On the other line was a voice that was like an angel. Okay so I may be exaggerating just a bit but the voice was super friendly! Anywho, my mother and I went to the pharmacy to fill out an application and next thing we know is that we were holding a new bottle of insulin completely free of charge (it runs about $190)! This all happened within a span of about 2 hours after initially speaking with the PCP’s office! I know that this happened so speedily because before when my mother and I were trying to resolve the issue on our own we kept coming up to dead ends. Nothing was working. However when we fully surrendered to problem to God, He fixed it in His timing! 🙂

In becoming a patient myself I have learned to surrender to follow the “doctor’s orders”. This part of yielding or surrendering has not been easy as I am studying to because a physician myself. I must be humble enough to accept that the physician overseeing my care has more experience that I do (which Praise God that he does!). I’m not gonna lie but I don’t like taking medicine three times a day and some of the meds taste bitter. However I must surrender and for the time being take them as prescribed. Of note: I like my doctors that I have been following up with here at my university. They are like my advocates. Jesus is also an advocate for us in heaven. (1 John 2:1, 2)

Also tomorrow is a big day as I will officially go back to a rotations! School here I come! 🙂 (did I mention that I am a bookworm nerd?!) I love going to school and have been having severe separation anxiety because I’ve just been itching to get back…(although if you were to come into my room you would see how I’ve put Harrison’s Internal Medicine & Cecil’s Medicine books to work and press flowers!)